The Fireman: A Novel Part 43

She gave him the bow. Showed him where to put his hands, kicked at his feet to make him spread his legs.

"You pull the cable to the corner of your mouth, like this," she said, miming it for him. "Practice without an arrow for a moment."

He practiced, swaying in the bitter cold, his nostrils red and the rest of his face the color of pale wax.

"How's that? Do I look like Errol Flynn?"

"You are a dashing motherf.u.c.ker," she told him.

She picked an arrow off the rocks, held it in one fist, closed her eyes, and frowned in concentration.

"What are you doing there?"

She didn't look at him, but felt his gaze upon her and was glad. In that moment she knew she was going to do it. It was like knowing you were going to hit a bull's-eye before the arrow left the bow.

Harper saw it in her head, the way she would move her hands in sequence to say you and me, babe, how 'bout it, without using any words at all. She saw it all and in that moment she knew how easy it was. You didn't have to do anything to connect with the Dragonscale. In that way it was just like being pregnant. She felt the song in her tendons and nerve endings, felt it flow like blood, without a sound, without words, without even the memory of words. You and me, babe, how 'bout it?

She lit up. Harper opened her eyes to see the cup of her hand spurt a heatless flame-a blue, mystic flame-all around the arrow, and she cried out in shock and dropped it.

The Fireman s.n.a.t.c.hed at her arm and clapped her hand under his turnout jacket to extinguish the blaze. Red freckles appeared high in his cheeks. His eyes strained behind his gla.s.ses.

"What are you doing?"

"Nothing," she said.

"What in G.o.d's name do you think you're doing? Do you want to die?"

"I-I just wanted to see-"

But he had turned away, his coat flapping, and began to lurch back up the dune.

She caught up to him at the top of the ridge, the highest point of the island. The shed was below, built right into the side of the slope. Moss and sea gra.s.s carpeted the roof. She tried to take his shoulder, but he spun around, throwing her hand off him.

He gave her a bewildered, bookish look, eyes straining behind his square gla.s.ses. "Is that what this was all about? Get me drunk and make out with me to see if you can trick me into teaching you how to burn yourself to death?"

"No. John. No. I kissed you because I felt like kissing you."

"Do you know what happened to the last person who decided she wanted to pull a burning rabbit out of a hat?"

"I know what happened."

"No, you don't. You have no idea. She turned to cinders." As he spoke he was backing unsteadily away from her.

"I know she died. I know it was terrible."

"Shut up. You don't know anything except I have something you want and you'll do whatever you need to get it: booze me up, flounce around, f.u.c.k me if necessary."

"No," she said. She felt she was caught in nettles. She couldn't struggle free and everything she said was another step deeper into the th.o.r.n.y tangle. "John. Please."

"You don't know what happened to her. You don't know what's still happening to her. You don't understand a thing about us." He threw the bow over the side of the roof, which was when she realized he had retreated out onto the top of his shed. He reeled back another step.

"Get away from me. And never do what you just did again." He held out his hands. Golden light throbbed in his Dragonscale. His palms became shallow dishes, br.i.m.m.i.n.g with flame. "Unless you want to burn like this forever."

"John, stop it, stop moving. Just stay where you are and-"

He wasn't listening. He took another step back and spread his arms. Wings of brightest fire spread in a cape from his hands, down to his sides. Black smoke gushed from his nostrils.

"Unless you want to be in h.e.l.l for the rest of your life," he said. "Like m-m-muh-muh-"

His eyes widened with surprise. He began to whirl his arms around and around for balance, drawing flaming hoops in the air. His right foot slid out from under him and down the roof. He dropped to one knee, lunged, and grabbed a fistful of gra.s.s. For one moment of perfect stillness he hung at a crooked angle. The long tough gra.s.s turned to threads of copper and burnt away in his hot hand.

"John!" she cried.

He dropped, banged down the tin roof, off the edge and into the night. She heard him hit the dune with a thud, a thump, a gasp, a soft whump.

Silence.

"Nothing broken!" he called. "Don't worry! I'm all right!"

He was quiet again.

"Except maybe my wrist," he said, in a suddenly disconsolate voice.

Harper closed her eyes and exhaled with relief.

"Ow," the Fireman said.

14.

After she popped the lunate back into place-it went in with a meaty thwack! and a shrill cry-and retaped the wrist, she made him drink two ladles of frosty water and swallow four Advil. She forced him to lie down and then spooned against him in his cot for one, her arm around his waist.

"You a.s.shole," she said. "You're lucky you didn't smash in those ribs again."

He put his injured hand over hers.

"I'm sorry," he said. "About what I said."

"Do you want to tell me about it? About what happened to her?"

"No," he said. "Yes. Do you really want to hear?"

She thought she already knew much of it, but she squeezed his thumb between her fingers, to let him know she was ready to listen. He sighed-a weary, haggard sound.

"Now and then Sarah and I would paddle out here, you know . . . to the cottage on this little island, to be away from the others. Allie didn't come with us-she had become almost completely nocturnal by then and slept most of the day, storing up energy for her night runs. Nick tagged along, but usually he'd nod off after a picnic out on the dunes. There were beds in the cottage, but he liked to sleep in the rowboat. He enjoyed the rock of the tide and the way the boat knocked against the pylons. There was a little dock then, out alongside the cottage. Well, that was all right. Sarah and I could have some wine and some fresh air and do what grown-ups like in the cottage.

"We had a sleepy romp in the sheets one day after a meal of cold chicken and some kind of salad with raisins in it. Just as Sarah was dozing off, she asked me if I would check on Nick. I went out in my bare feet and jeans-and saw a little gusher of flame spout up from the boat. I'm sure I would've screamed, only I was too scared to get any air. I staggered out onto the dock, trying to shout Nick's name, as if he could've heard. All that would come out was a thin wheeze. I was sure I'd find him ablaze.

"But he wasn't on fire, he was breathing fire. Every time the boat knocked against the pylons, he'd cough a mushroom cloud of red flame and then laugh a dozy little giggle. I don't think he was all the way awake or really knew what he was doing. I know he wasn't aware of me watching. After all, he couldn't hear me, and he wasn't looking my way, his entire drowsing attention focused on his work with the flame. By then I had dropped to my knees. My legs had gone all weak. I watched him for two or three minutes. He'd blow rings of fire and then wave his fingers and dash off a dart of flame to jump through the hoops.

"Finally I was able to get back to my feet, although my knees were still shaking. I made my unsteady way back to the cottage. My tongue was stuck to the roof of my mouth and I needed a drink of water before I was able to speak. I woke Sarah gently and told her I needed to show her something and not to be afraid. I said it was about Nick and that he was all right, but she needed to see what he was doing. And I led her out.

"When she saw flame spurting from the boat, she got wobbly herself and I needed to hold her arm to support her. But she didn't shout for him, didn't cry out. She let me lead her to him, trusting me that there was no reason to panic.

"We stood over him and watched him play with fire for most of five minutes before she was overcome and sank to her knees and reached into the boat to touch him. She stroked her hand over his hair and he snapped out of the trance he was in and for a moment was coughing black smoke and blinking blearily. He jumped up on a gunwale, looking embarra.s.sed, as if we had found him flipping through a girlie magazine.

"She climbed into the boat, her whole body trembling, and took him into her arms. I descended after her. For a long time we sat together in silent conference. He told his mother no, he wasn't hurt, it hadn't caused him any pain at all. He told us he had been doing it for days and that it never hurt. He said he always did it in the boat, because something about the sway of the ocean helped him get going. He enumerated his many accomplishments. He could breathe smoke, blow streams of fire, and light one hand like a torch. He told us he had made little sparrows of flame and set them flying and that sometimes it seemed to him he was flying with them, sometimes it seemed to him he was a sparrow himself. I asked him to show us and he said he couldn't, not right then. He said after he lit himself on fire it sometimes took him a while to recharge. He said after throwing sparrows-that was how he described it in sign language-sometimes it was hard to get warm, that he'd have the shivers and feel like he was coming down with flu.

"I wanted to know how he was doing it. He did his best to explain, but he is only a little boy, and we didn't learn much, not that day. He said you could put the Dragonscale to sleep by rocking it gently and singing to it like you'd sing to a baby. Except of course Nick is deaf and doesn't have any idea what singing sounds like. He told us that he thought music was like the tide or breath: something that flowed in and back out again in a kind of soothing rhythm. He said he'd get that flow going in his mind and then the Dragonscale would dream whatever he wanted it to dream. It would make rings of fire or sparrows of flame or whatever he liked. I said I didn't understand and asked him if he could show me. He looked at his mother and Sarah nodded and said it was all right, he could try to teach me how to do it . . . but if either of us ever hurt ourselves, we had to stop, right away.

"The next morning my lessons began. After three days I could light a candle. In a week I was throwing ropes of fire like a walking flamethrower. I began to show off. I couldn't help myself. When Allie and I went on one of our rescue missions, I would make a wall of smoke to create an impressive getaway. And once when we were chased by a Cremation Crew, I turned on them and ignited, made myself into a great burning demon with wings to scare them off. They ran wailing!

"How I loved having my own legend. Being stared at and whispered about. There is no drug in all the world as addictive as celebrity. I boasted to Sarah that getting Dragonscale was the best thing that had ever happened to me. That if someone came up with a cure, I'd refuse to take it. That the 'scale wasn't a plague. It was evolution.

"We often discussed my ideas about Dragonscale: how it was transmitted, how it bonded with the mind, how it produced enzymes to protect Nick and me from burns. I say we discussed my ideas. What I really mean is I lectured her, and she listened. Oh, I did like having an audience for all my insights and theories. That's what should be on her death certificate, you know. Sarah Storey-talked to death by John Rookwood. In a sense that's what happened to her.

"I remember the day after I first turned into a devil and scared off a crowd of armed men. I took Sarah out to the island for a picnic and a celebratory screw. She was quiet, off in her own head, but I was too full of my own greatness to really notice. We made love, and after I lay in bed, feeling like a rock star. A rock star at last. She got up and found her jeans and dug a bottle out of a pocket, a bottle full of white grime. I asked her what she had there. She said it was infected ash. Then, in front of me, she dumped it on the kitchen counter and snorted it. She poisoned herself intentionally. She did it before I had time to scream. She knew all about how to infect herself, of course, because I had told her just how the spore spread.

"Three days later the first marks appeared across her back. It looked as if the devil had lashed her with a burning whip. I was right about the method of transmission, but for once there wasn't any pleasure in saying 'I knew it.' She was dead less than four weeks later."

15.

He grimaced, holding his right wrist in his left hand. "How's your pain?" she asked.

"It's not as hard to talk about as I thought. It feels good to remember her, even the bad stuff at the end. Sometimes I think I've spent the last nine months lighting fires because it feels so good to burn things down. Like: if Sarah burned, then so can the rest of the world. Arson is almost as good as Prozac." He went silent, thinking. "s.h.i.t. You weren't asking about psychological pain, were you?"

"Yeah, I was asking about your wrist."

"Oh. Uh. Quite hurty actually. Is that normal?"

"After popping the bones of the wrist out of place for a second time? Yes." He twined the fingers of his good hand through hers. He stared across the room at the furnace, the hatch open on a square of yellow leaping flame.

"I hate a little that this feels good," he said.

"We're just holding each other. We're not even undressed."

"I shouldn't have kissed you outside."

"We were drunk. We were having fun."

"I'm still in love with her, Harper."

"That's okay, John. This isn't anything."

"It is, though. It's something to me."

"Okay. It's something to me, too. But we aren't going to do anything you have to feel bad about. You haven't been held since she died, and people need that. People need closeness."

Firewood whistled and snapped.

"But she isn't dead. She isn't alive, but she isn't dead, either. She's . . . stuck."

"I know."

The Fireman turned his head to look back at her, his gaunt features drawn in alarm and surprise.

"I've known for a while," Harper said. "I saw her once. In the fire. I know there's something there, anyway, something in the furnace that you're keeping alive. But whatever that is, it can't be a person. It can't be aware. Flame can't have a consciousness."

"The spore can. That's how the Phoenix seems alive. It is. It's a part of me. Like a hand. Sarah's body burned, but the girl in the fire remains. As long as I keep the fire going, some incombustible part of her survives."

"You should sleep."

"I don't think I can. Not with my wrist throbbing like it is. Besides. Maybe I don't just need to tell. Maybe you need to hear. Before you go any further down the road you're on and wind up killing yourself like she did."

16.

"She took to the Bright straight off. I've never seen anyone get it faster. Four days after she developed visible marks, she was lighting up with us in chapel, br.i.m.m.i.n.g with brightness and joy. You know how the 'scale can be peculiarly beautiful? Comparing Sarah to the others was like comparing lightning to the lightning bug. It was exciting, and a little scary. She had more power than any of us. She'd play the organ, and after, no one could remember their own name-they could only remember hers. For hours after we joined together in the Bright, people would drift around, talking like her, walking like her."

"Carol has that effect on people now." Harper considered for a moment, then said, "Allie does, too, I think. To a lesser degree."

"Sarah wanted me to show her how to light herself up, how to cast flame. She wanted to know how to send her consciousness out into fire. By then I was incorporating the Phoenix into rescue attempts, and Nick was making flocks of burning sparrows to hunt for the infected. I wouldn't teach her, though. I was angry. I was so angry. Angry and scared. It was one thing to be contaminated by accident, and another to contaminate yourself on purpose. She wouldn't let me off the hook, either. She threw every boast, every know-it-all lecture, every smug certainty back in my face. If casting fire was safe for her deaf nine-year-old and safe for her lover, it was safe for her. I had told her I wouldn't trade the 'scale for anything, that I was glad to be a carrier. Didn't we all say, in chapel, every day, how lucky we were? How blessed? She had seen us reeling with pleasure, with delight. How could I want that for myself and deny it to her? She had seen me fight for the sick and wanted to fight by my side. How could I refuse her?

"The more she talked, the more pigheaded I became. I hated her, myself, the world. I was ill with it, sick with malice. There was so much I didn't know. Only two people could throw fire without hurting themselves, Nick and myself. I held back on trying to teach Allie, although she had nagged me often enough. I had sound reasons for reluctance. Consider this, for example: What if full mastery of the Dragonscale is only possible for those with a Y chromosome? I'm sure that sounds s.e.xist, but nature has never had any great interest in gender equality. What if you need a certain blood type to make it work? What if it's a quirk of DNA, like those who are immune to HIV because of a mutation that strips of them of the receptor the virus needs to infect them?

"So I wouldn't teach Sarah. In the last weeks I was hardly talking to her. We shouted, we screamed at each other, but that wasn't what I would call talking. I thought if I didn't teach her, at least she wouldn't be any worse off than anyone else in camp. At least she would be kept safe by joining the Bright. I thought I could protect her by shutting her out. Putting a wall up between us."